Other Worlds, Other Lives
by stafadox
Summary: Sarah's time in the Labyrinth changed her life in more than one way. She's moved on, but not forgotten. When she makes a critical mistake, she'll have to count on her friends to help her get out of the mess she's made.
1. Chapter 1

Sarah wrapped her hands tightly around her coffee mug. It was the week before Halloween, and the rainy season had started in earnest. The sky was glum, the air was chilly, and she and her roommate had gone out for coffee. Sarah leaned in as Lori complained about the undergraduates she was working with this semester.

"You're kidding!" Sarah said, and took a sip of the rich, light roast in her mug.

"No! She seriously came to office hours and asked me to raise her attendance grade so that she wouldn't have to work so hard for the next exam and still get an A in the course. Looked me right in the face, explained the math to me, and just expected that I would do it! Could she be bothered to put that much effort into actually showing up to class consistently? No way," Lori said.

"Did you tell Dr. Lawrence?"

"Of course I did," Lori responded, "There was no way that I was going to tell her off and not let Dr. L know. Lord knows this kid probably went to her next, telling tales about what a horrific goblin I am!"

"Lori, I have seen goblins. You, my dear, are no goblin," Sarah said. Lori laughed at her friend.

"Should I take that as a compliment, or are you saying that I'm too conniving to be goblin?"

"You said it, not me," Sarah said as she laughed. She took another sip, and a moment to consider her friend.

After she'd come back from the Labyrinth, she figured out that speaking with people about her experience would go one of two ways. The first, and more common, scenario ended in dismissal. It's what had happened when she told her father. Two weeks after her experience, she'd broken down and told him everything. His response was to furrow his eyebrows, look long and hard at her, and ask if she'd fallen asleep in the living room with the television on. Had she been watching reruns of the Twilight Zone, maybe? When she'd insisted that she'd actually run the Labyrinth to save Toby, he'd asked if she needed to go to the doctor.

She decided to tell him that he was right; it must have been a bad dream.

The second scenario played out much differently. So far it only had happened a handful of times. The first time had been with Lori. It was shortly after they'd moved in together, and they were drinking in their apartment. They had gone earlier to a cheap showing of Exorcist III, and discussion had shifted to the supernatural. Sarah had jokingly suggested that they buy a Ouija board to try to talk to some dead celebrity or another- she couldn't remember who anymore- and Lori blanched.

She'd asked if Sarah had gone mad. Sarah hadn't understood her problem. She was just trying to have a little fun. Lori had looked around, sighed, and asked Sarah if she could trust her to not think she was crazy. Sarah's interest was piqued in a way that only a slightly drunk girl with a personal history of paranormal experiences could be.

Lori, it turned out, had used a Ouija board with her older sister. She had been 15 at the time, and her sister had convinced her it would be a good time. They jokingly tried to summon spirits over a few sessions during the course of the weekend. Nothing had come of it, at first.

It had started with knocking, Lori said, and weird scratching at the walls in the room they'd shared. It had freaked them out, sure, but they weren't really concerned about it. A few weeks after the scratching, they started hearing the voices. They didn't really say anything that the girls could make out. It sounded like a small group of people having a hushed conversation just outside their door. They started sleeping in bed together.

Then things started moving.

At first it had been little things being moved around without them seeing it. Lori noticed it first. She was looking for her backpack, which she kept under the foot of her bed, but it wasn't there one morning. She spent fifteen minutes looking for it- tearing apart the room in the process- and was about to leave for school without it when she turned around to find it sitting on her bed. She'd slept on the sofa after that.

It had been her sister that actually had seen something being moved. She'd come in the room to put laundry away when a doll that had belonged to her mother flew off the dresser and slammed into the wall next to her head. She dropped the laundry, grabbed Lori, and went to the library to figure out how to fix the situation.

It took a few days and few different trips, naturally, so as to not make the librarians think something was off, when they came across the idea of smudging. They went to a head shop that her sister's friend knew about, bought the sage, and smudged the whole house. It had helped, but Lori admitted that every now and then she still saw misty gray figures move in the shadows.

Sarah had been relieved to hear the story. It made her own tale seem tame by comparison. When she told Lori that she didn't think she was crazy, and shared her story about the Labyrinth, a new friendship was born. They had been friends before to be sure, but now they shared each other's deepest secrets. They took the opportunity to commiserate about their experiences not being over, too.

Sarah still spoke with her friends, though less and less frequently as time went on, but she enjoyed being able to talk to them every now and then. She did not enjoy the other things that she'd been able to see since her trip, though. It was called 'the Sight' according to the books she'd read, and she'd been careful to not talk to any of the creatures she'd seen because of it.

Lori had her shadow figures and Sarah had her goblins. They were a matched pair. It was an easy friendship, and one that Sarah had come to rely on. The University of Washington had offered her a full ride for her undergrad studies, and then she'd gotten in to their creative writing MFA program with an assistantship. She'd fallen in love with Seattle the moment she'd gotten here, but she was a long way from her family, and it had been a long five years since she left New York.

She smiled at her friend.

"Are you even listening to me, Sarah?"

"Huh?"

"I didn't think so. I didn't realize how late it was. I have to be to class in twenty minutes, and as much as I would love to skip, this is one of my discussion sections. Can't have the teacher playing hooky, right?"

"Hey now, that's every undergrad's dream," Sarah said.

"That may be true, but I enjoy being able to eat. If I lose my assistantship and stipend, it's all on you, babe. And we both know that yours is smaller than mine to begin with." Sarah rolled her eyes. Lori headed her off, "Yes, it's ridiculous, but the sciences pay better and you know it. Should have gone into biology like me." Sarah raised her eyebrow. "You're right. You're right. Let's just grab a couple to-go cups and head out, yeah? Walk with me to class?"

"Always, my lady," Sarah said as she stood up. They both grabbed their raincoats and bags, and Lori took their coffees and went up to the counter to get the to-go cups. Sarah took their plates to the bussing station.

As they walked out the front door into the wind and drizzle, Lori didn't mention the way the shadows lingered a little oddly by the bathrooms and Sarah didn't comment on the fae couple drinking espressos by the window.


	2. Chapter 2

Two days later, the weather had become drearier. Sarah was walking to her next class, wishing that she'd remembered her raincoat when she'd left the apartment that morning. She looked up at the dull gray clouds, and closed her eyes. She sighed, and wrapped her sweater around her a little more tightly.

When she looked back in front of her, she realized she was less than a step away from plowing right into the side of a very tall, very gray person. She stopped short, but managed to slam her foot directly into a puddle. Cold water oozed into her sock through the eyelets in her boot. She cringed, knowing that her toes were going to squish all day, and that her boot had even odds of smelling like rancid butter by the time she got home.

Half a beat later, she realized that she'd managed to splash muddy water up the person's legs. It was a man, she realized, wearing a light gray a suit. An expensive looking one.

Of course. That would be her luck.

Her hand flew up to her mouth. "I am so sorry, sir. I did not see you there. I should have been paying attention. Oh my goodness," Sarah told him. He turned his head and just blinked at her. "Are you a professor? If you let me know which department you're in, I'll stop off and leave money with the secretary so you can get your suit dry cleaned. I am so, so sorry."

He narrowed his eyes at her. "No, I'm not."

"Oh. Uh," she said. She started wringing her hands. "Uh, do you…do you have a business card? I feel really terrible about this. I don't have much cash on me right now, but I'll make sure to send you some to make up for this."

"No, I don't," he said. His nostrils flared, and his mouth tightened into a thin line. "And I don't accept your apologies. This entire encounter has been most rude on your part, miss."

She shrank back a bit at that, and shook her head. Annoyance, frustration, maybe a bit of anger- she'd expected those. Curt, borderline cordial condescension was not something Sarah anticipated. "Of course. I am terribly sorry. I'll just go, then. Thank you for being understanding."

"What did you just say?" He turned his whole body to face hers.

"Th-thank you for not being terribly upset about this. I…I'm just going to go now before I make things worse. Again, I am so so sorry." She ducked around him, and hurried toward Thomson as fast as she could. She could feel him watching her as she went, but refused to look back at him. Her face was hot. She was sure that she was blushing furiously.

She decided to cut through the Communications building on her way to her class in Padelford rather than risk knocking someone else into the mud.

As she walked to her seat, she realized two things: that he had been unusually tall and that his eyes had been vibrantly violet. Her breath rushed out of her.

 _Fuck_.

She couldn't find it in herself to focus on lecture that evening. She didn't expect that missing Said's work being applied to Beowulf would be that much of a problem, though. She was far too focused on playing out what happened over and over. She hoped to the heavens that he'd not been fae.

She'd met quite a few characters in the years since she'd made it out to Seattle. It was just as likely that he was just another odd duck, she rationalized. But there was a niggling voice in the back of her mind that asked how many of those odd ducks she'd met wore such nice suits. And hadn't that been a silk pocket square? And nice Italian leather shoes?

She argued briefly with herself about how she would know what Italian leather shoes would even look like before conceding the original point. None of the quirky folks she'd met had been dressed that way or held themselves with such arrogance. But she didn't lose hope that she'd just met a new category of Seattle strangeness.

That evening, when she got back to her apartment, she saw that Lori had left a note on the counter. She'd gone over to help take care of her grandmother in Redmond and would be back on Sunday morning. Sarah sighed in relief. This was good. It would give her the chance to talk to someone about the incident and the man from earlier that day.

She set her backpack down and untied her Docs, set them upside down on the heating grate to dry, and headed to her bedroom.

"Hoggle! Are you there? I need to talk to you!" Sarah put her hand on her mirror, and waited. He didn't answer right away. It wasn't uncommon; he frequently had to take a break from work and step out to answer her calls. She gave him a few moments, and called to him again. "Hoggle? Where are you? Something strange happened today, and I need to talk to you about it."

He still didn't respond. That _was_ odd. She decided to leave the door to her room open and make some dinner. When he had a chance to talk to her, he would call.

She headed to the kitchen and scrounged around for a box of macaroni and cheese. She thought that she heard him calling for her while she was looking for a pot to boil the pasta in, but he wasn't in the mirror. She went back to making her electric orange ambrosia.

She ate in front of the television while she watched _Unsolved Mysteries_. She found a strange sense of comfort in the odd stories and, of course, in Robert Stack's voice. She kept the TV turned down, though, so she could hear if Hoggle called for her. But the show ended, and Hoggle didn't call.

Sarah decided to take a shower. She double checked to make sure the doors and windows were closed and locked. She loved the show, but it had left her slightly paranoid after profiling several murders. When she was satisfied she was safe, she stripped and got in the shower, but left the bathroom door open. Hoggle still didn't call.

By the time she was in her pajamas, Sarah was starting to really worry. Hoggle had never ignored her before. She prayed that the Goblin King was keeping him busy, and that his absence had nothing to do with her run-in earlier that day.

She decided to try to call him again in the morning. She knew that, in the meantime, she needed to distract herself or she would end up pacing a hole in the floor. Reading. She would read. It was Friday, though, and she wasn't going to read for her classes. Grad school had an unfortunate tendency to make it almost impossible to read for pleasure, but she made an effort to get in at least one novel every other month. So, picking up her new copy of _Soul Music_ , she climbed into bed, and read Terry Pratchett's new work until her eyelids were too heavy to keep open.

She fell asleep with the light on.

She shouldn't have been surprised to find herself back in the Labyrinth. She'd dreamt about it plenty of times since she made it through. None of those dreams had felt this real, though, and most of the time she dreamt she was in the hedges, not in the tunnels behind the oubliette.

She looked around her, and called out to no one in particular. "Hello? Is anyone there? Hoggle? Ludo?" No one responded. Her heart sank into her stomach. She could feel the tension building in her shoulders. No one was here with her. She was alone beneath the Labyrinth. She needed out. She needed out now.

She began to run. She tried to follow the path from her memory, but the right way seemed to be just out of reach from her mind. She took a right turn, and then another. She was about to turn around and take the last left when she saw a faint light in the distance. It was the only light she had seen, and so she headed towards it.

The light grew brighter, but it was taking her longer to reach it than she initially expected. Sarah wasn't surprised. It didn't make her any less frustrated, though. She kept running.

When she finally made it to the light, she was faced with a fork in the tunnel. She could see a torch hanging from the wall, burning dimly. It was the light she had seen, and so she took that path. It was still a bit down the hall, but she felt safer with the source of the light visible.

As she walked past it, she heard a faint rustling behind her. She stopped dead in her tracks. The tension in her shoulders returned.

"What were you thinking, Sarah?"

She squashed the urge to take off running, and instead turned around. The Blind Beggar from the tunnels- the _Goblin King_ her memory screamed- crouched in front of her. She eyed him wearily.

"Do you know what they do to the people who betray the fact they have the sight? Hmm? Do you know?" He shuffled closer to her. "You really must be more careful, child." He reached up, wrapped his hand around the torch handle, and smothered the flame in the sand on the floor.

The tunnel went dark.

Sarah woke up.

The blue light from the television streaked across her walls though the open doorway. She'd forgotten to turn it off earlier. It was then that she realized that her reading light had been turned off.


	3. Chapter 3

If you can't tell yet, I suspect this will end up being a long, slow story. Jareth will be showing up more dominantly in the next few chapters.

Sarah stared at the ceiling. Her heart was pounding so hard she swore she could feel her pulse in her feet. She tried to slow her breathing. It had been a dream- _just_ a dream. She grabbed the book off of her chest, set it on her nightstand, and turned the light back on. Her hand lingered on the chain. She must have forgotten she turned it off. Obviously, it must not have been on when she fell asleep. There was no way someone else turned it off.

She swung her legs over the side of the bed, and sat for a moment to compose herself. Running her hands through her hair, she stood up. Sarah stretched, pulling her arms together over her head and reached up until she stood on her tip toes. She plodded out to the kitchen. Chamomile tea was calling her name.

Sarah dug around in the low cabinets, looking for the tea kettle. "Aha!" She shoved her arm into the back, and dragged it out. She filled it, and fidgeted while she waited for it to heat up on the stove.

There had to be a perfectly logical explanation for what happened. That man had been frustrated that she'd gotten mud all over him. And it was entirely reasonable for him to be, Sarah mused to herself. She'd been careless. She very well could have outright knocked him over. And why? Because her head was in the clouds instead of on the world in front of her. Typical. She would have been pissed if someone had done that to her. Sure, he'd been brusque, but what else should she expect? _Him_ to apologize? And it wasn't like there was anything that she could have said right then to make things better.

And his eyes? Sarah chewed her lip. His eyes had been startling, but that didn't necessarily mean that he was fae. They hadn't been so outstanding that she noticed them right away, either. She sighed. It was entirely possible that she wasn't remembering them correctly, she assured herself. She rubbed her hand up and down her arm. That must have been it. She wasn't remembering things the way they really were. And if she was, well, Elizabeth Taylor had violet eyes didn't she?

Clearly, she'd just built this into something it wasn't. The dream hadn't helped things, either. The tea would surely help her calm down, though. Wasn't it just like her, she wondered, to try and make things what they weren't? She needed to stop reading into things, she told herself. Just because she'd been right about the Goblin King and the Labyrinth didn't mean she was right about everything.

She chuckled to herself as she dropped a sachet of chamomile into her favorite mug. After she poured the water in, she stirred it mindlessly. Her thoughts drifted back to the Goblin King. She'd been so scared of him in her dream. When she really thought about him, though, he was just an overly-flamboyant narcissist. Play into his ego and she wouldn't ever see the legitimately dangerous side of him she knew lurked under the feathers and glitter. The bags and bags of feathers and glitter.

Sarah smirked. She felt calmer already. She fished the sachet out of the mug, tossed it in the trash, and dropped the spoon in the sink on her way out to the living room. If she was lucky, she might catch a few trashy shows before she went back to bed.

Sarah woke up to the sound of the _Reboot_ theme song. She squeezed her eyes against the morning light. "Ugh, gross," she said as she wiped the partially dried drool off her face.

She flicked the tv off, and stood. Her mug fell to the floor. Sighing, she picked it up and walked it over to the sink. Leaning against the counter, she thought a moment about what she wanted for breakfast. There was oatmeal in the cupboard and a yogurt or two in the fridge. The yogurts were Lori's, though.

It was oatmeal, then. She grimaced. She pulled the cupboard door open and grabbed the canister of oats. She popped open the lid. A small, gray and white moth flew out. Sarah gagged. "Well. Breakfast out and a trip to the grocery store it is," she said as she dropped the canister in the trash. She wondered idly if they would be able to get rid of those moths; they'd come in with the birdseed Lori had picked up for her mother and they'd never left.

She headed to her bedroom. She dug around a bit, looking for acceptably clean jeans. Laundry would have to happen later today, too. She sniffed a pair: musty. She threw them back in the pile of clothes. She grabbed another. They smelled ever-so-faintly of cigarettes. "Good enough," she said. She pulled a thin black sweater out of her dresser, and grabbed a pair of underwear as an afterthought. She headed into the bathroom, dressed, and brushed her teeth with record speed. She looked for her hairbrush. It wasn't on the vanity. She checked the drawers; it wasn't there, either. "Huh."

She walked back to her bedroom. Sarah saw it laying in front of her mirror. She picked it up. She was brushing her hair when she remembered that Hoggle hadn't answered her calls last night. She furrowed her brow. She grabbed a hair tie off her wrist, and pulled it back into a loose ponytail.

 _Might as well try one more time before I head out_. She leaned in, and knocked. "Hoggle? Can you hear me?" She paused. "Hoggle, I need to talk with you as soon as you can get away. I…I feel like an idiot, but I need someone to talk to. I'm going out for a while, but I'll be back later today." Sarah put her palm against the mirror. "I hope everything is ok with you," she said. She stood looking at the mirror a moment. It wasn't like him to take this long to respond to her. But then, she was probably blowing that out of proportion, too. _It's been a bad couple of days_.

 _Breakfast_ she thought to herself. _Things will be better with some real food in my stomach. And coffee._ She pulled a pair of socks out of her dresser, and dug her Keds from under her bed. She threw pulled them on, grabbed her coat and purse, and headed out the door. She headed down to the street. The sky was gray, and it was humid, but it wasn't raining. It was cool, but not cold. She took a moment to appreciate it. She smiled. She knew just the place to grab breakfast.

She made it to the diner just as the last of the morning rush was dying down. It was busy, but not packed. _Perfect timing_. A smattering of college students sat eating what, judging by the number of sunglasses sitting around the room, was meant to be a hangover cure. A few families and some older couples filled the other tables and booths.

The hostess took her to a table with a window view and left her with a menu. She didn't need it. She waited for her waitress to come over and put in her order- two eggs over medium, wheat toast, home fries, fried apples, coffee with room for cream, and a glass of orange juice. While she waited for her food, she people-watched.

There were always so many stories going on around her. It was something that she realized after she came back from her own adventure. Not all of them needed to have fantastic elements. The siblings behind her talking about caring for their elderly mother had as much of a journey in front of them as she had in winning back Toby. Their story, though, wouldn't end in joy. There would be relief, perhaps, but there would also be sadness and melancholy.

The people walking by in the street were the same. A woman in her late twenties or early thirties sped by with a large bakery box. A birthday cake, likely. Was it her child's? A friend's? She was walking fairly briskly, her gait tight. Did she have a busy day ahead, or was she running late? Maybe it was a cake meant to be served after an important meeting, she was running behind, and her boss was going to mad with her. Would she be 'spoken-to' later today or fired? It was entirely possible she had a bad breakup, and was going to go home and eat the whole thing while watching terrible, sappy movies.

It was something that she had learned to appreciate from her courses. Everyone has a story, everyone has dealt with things that would make you weep for them, and the vast, vast majority manage to carry on. What was her concern about a man with maybe-violet eyes compared to people facing the death of a loved one- like the people behind her? She felt a flash of guilt, and decided to not think about it anymore. Sarah stared out the window at nothing in particular until her food came.

She ate slowly, trying to appreciate the flavors in the food. They really amounted to salty-greasy and greasy-sweet, but they were delicious all the same. It was hardly high cuisine, but she had yet to be disappointed by the food here. She'd finished about two-thirds of her meal when she decided that she was stuffed and it was time to go. She flagged her waitress down, got the check, left her tip on the table, and went up to the register to pay. While she was being rung out, she felt the uneasy sensation of eyes on her.

Sarah stiffened. She fought briefly with herself about whether or not to look around, but decided that it would be best to do a quick check. She turned her head. Nothing out of the ordinary stuck out to her, but the feeling that she was being watched didn't go away. She thanked the man at the register and collected her change.

As she pushed the door open to head out, a man with violet eyes wearing a pale gray suit grinned at her back. He quietly folded the newspaper he had been reading, and followed her out of the diner.


End file.
